Samsung are reportedly getting serious about launching a payments system some are already dubbing “Samsung Pay” to compete with Apple Pay. Apparently Samsung Vice Chairman Lee Jay-Yong met with Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and now venture capitalist to discuss payments technology.
Whilst it could be an innocent enough meeting between high flying executives discussing payment technology, but at a reach, it could also signal an interest by SamSung to acquire PayPal once it’s spun off from eBay.
However Samsung might not need PayPal, their recent purchase of Loop Pay means that we can already expect to see payment tech in the next generation of Samsung Galaxy devices. Not only will Loop Pay give Samsung payments, it’ll give them their smartphone users the ability to pay anywhere that mag stripe credit and debit card are accept – importantly North America. Of course Europe is almost exclusively chip and pin payments and the US will follow so Samsung will have to rapidly progress from mag stripe technology but they need it today.
One thing is obvious however and that is that Samsung will be entering the payments market in the near future. Whilst the digital wallet is getting ever nearer it’s not here today, but it might be in just a few year’s time and both Apple, Samsung, PayPal, Google and indeed everyone in the payments world are working to make it a reality.
